DIIA to Host Horizon Report Executive Briefing

On May 20, DIIA will host a briefing for UT Austin’s executive leadership on the 2009 Horizon Report, a summary of “emerging technologies likely to have a large impact on teaching, learning, research, or creative expression” in education. The report is produced annually by the New Media Consortium (NMC) and the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative (ELI), an EDUCAUSE program.

Laurence F. Johnson, chief executive officer of NMC, will be the keynote speaker. The briefing, which features a hands-on introduction to the emerging technologies found in the report, will take place from 10-11:30 a.m. in the ACES Visualization Laboratory located in the ACES Building, Room 2.404a.

Judy Ashcroft, dean of Continuing and Innovative Education, finds it most fitting that DIIA should host this important event.

I’m very excited to bring the Horizon Report Executive Briefing to our campus. Exploring this important research in an interactive, dynamic symposium is just one example of how DIIA introduces new technology and its educational applications to The University of Texas at Austin. As a member of the NMC and EDUCAUSE, DIIA actively works to integrate research found in their reports on our campus. By using Horizon Report findings, DIIA has been able to anticipate, evaluate, and share instructional technology breakthroughs that are now used every day at the university.

Robert Bruce, associate dean of DIIA, takes pride in DIIA’s role in helping UT Austin remain a leader in the use of emerging instructional technologies.

With the support of the provost, DIIA is the university’s central resource for research-based, technology-enhanced learning, and we continue to collaborate with faculty in all colleges and schools to introduce innovative, productive uses of technology in the classroom. I hope that many of our campus leaders will join us for what promises to be a fascinating glimpse into the future of technology in higher education.

The 2009 Horizon Report identifies six emerging technologies that are likely to enter mainstream use in higher education over the next five years.

Year One

Mobile Devices—increased use of third party applications, such as reference and reading materials, checklists, and productivity applications on mobile phones and other devices
Cloud Computing—using different networked Internet resources to create a low cost, robust, collaborative, easy to use, scalable infrastructure to share documents

Years Two and Three

Geo-everything—devices with geo-locators in field research to track animal populations, weather trends, migration, or urban development patterns
Personal Web—increased use of simplified publishing tools, personal blogs, and social media as an arena for students and educators to voice opinions, ideas, and research

Years Four and Five

Semantic-aware applications—using phrases in addition to keywords to create more contextualized Web searches
Smart objects—devices that can be tagged and traced to interact with each other to give researchers information, locations, updates, and status about library resources, research items, and people.